NYPD Punishes City by Not Citing, Arresting Citizens as Much. Oh, No!

Right now in New York City, guys selling black market cigarettes are much, much less likely to be harassed and arrested (or worse) by the New York Police Department. Apparently, or at least in the eyes of the New York Post, we're supposed to see this as a bad thing (people not getting arrested is certainly a bad thing for the New York Post's reporting, anyway):

It's not a slowdown — it's a virtual work stoppage.

NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops — as officers feel betrayed by the mayor and fear for their safety, The Post has learned.

The dramatic drop comes as Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio plan to hold an emergency summit on Tuesday with the heads of the five police unions to try to close the widening rift between cops and the administration.

They provide an info box showing, in addition to the huge drop in minor offense summonses, a 94 percent drop in citations for traffic violations, a 92 percent drop in parking violation citations, and a 66 percent drop in overall arrests.

And there's this paragraph:

The Post obtained the numbers hours after revealing that cops were turning a blind eye to some minor crimes and making arrests only "when they have to" since the execution-style shootings of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.

Well, we can only hope the NYPD unions and de Blasio settle their differences soon so that the police can go back to arresting people for reasons other than "when they have to."

The NYPD's failure to arrest and cite people will also end up costing the city huge amounts of money that it won't be able to seize from its citizens, which is likely the real point. That's the "punishment" for the de Blasio administration for not supporting them. One has to wonder if they even understand, or care, that their "work stoppage" is giving police state critics exactly what they want—less harsh enforcement of the city's laws.

No doubt police are hoping that citizens will be furious when police don't do anything about the hobo pissing on the wall in the alley or won't make the guy in apartment 3b turn down the racket at four in the morning. And they're probably right to a certain degree. But if they think the city is going to turn into sheer anarchy over the failure to enforce petty regulations, they're probably going to be disappointed. Over at the Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney challenged the assumption that police are all that stand between us and mayhem. He used the Washington, D.C., chief of police's complaints that pulling officers away to deal with protesters kept police from preventing "homicides and shootings and violent crimes and robberies and burglaries right before the holidays." Carney noted:

In the week of Dec. 13 through Dec. 20 — the week when most of these protests happened, dragging MPD away from the neighborhoods — no homicides were reported. Not a single one. Only one homicide happened in D.C. in the two weeks following the grand jury decision to not indict the New York City police officer who killed Eric Garner with a chokehold — police say it happened on a Tuesday morning.

As a NYC cop pointed out to me, on Sept. 11, 2001, there was no upswing in crime. Nor immediately after Hurricane Sandy.

We obviously need police. But if anyone believes that our police, in their large numbers, their liberty to engage, and their military-style arsenals, are the only guards against bedlam, they might be misguided.

Presumably, next year, after this all dies down, the NYPD may note a big drop of crime in December entirely because they stopped finding reasons to charge people with crimes.

Police unions could use the experience to decry all the petty, unnecessary reasons they're ordered to cite and arrest people in the first place, but that's not going to happen because they love the drug war and the money that comes into the departments from fighting it.

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126 responses to “NYPD Punishes City by Not Citing, Arresting Citizens as Much. Oh, No!”

Meh. Yes and no. The fact is DeBalsio invited their hostility. He could have made it about process and procedure (and he’d probably have been more right). Instead, he made it an accusation of racism on the part of the police. The latter is much more of a direct insult. And if this were coming from someone else, it might have gotten smoothed over. But, DeBlasio has made a lot of common cause with Al Sharpton. And Sharpton has long been a guy who, even if the police were completely reasonable (and I’m NOT saying they are), they’d have a problem with.

Accusations of racism don’t get taken lightly. Accusations about the systemic injustice at the very core of every level of government are to be ignored.

The cops could beat Kelly Thomas to death and then re-animate his corpse and beat him to death again, everyday for a year and setting aside from the stunning medical breakthrough, no one would give a shit unless NBC lies again and says Kelly Thomas was a black victim of racism. That’s precisely why all this pushback police conduct is fucking worthless if not outright damaging to everyone’s liberty.

Accusations of racism don’t get taken lightly. Accusations about the systemic injustice at the very core of every level of government are to be ignored.

Well, you left out one little thing. Are the accusations true? If he’s accusing the cops of being racist and they aren’t, if he’s accusing them of being racist for implementing the very orders he’s giving them, I can very well see where they might be a little justified in being angry with him.

Well two things. One; I don’t know, is it true? and two; if it is true the crime is still murder, not superdooperplusmurder because the victim is black.

The point is that people are accosted by police on daily basis. They commit violent acts against innocents on a daily basis. It’s not as though it ceases to be a crime if the perpetrators are of the same race as the victim. It’s irrelevent, the crime is all that should be focused on. You shouldn’t need cries of racism in order to condemn police brutality, cries of police brutality should do that function. The fact that people get hung up on race is to everyone’s detriment and only strengthens the further institutionalization of police misconduct.

I just went there read the article and messages and what struck me was that the majority of posters actually from NY supported the NYPD and those critical of the NYPD posted from elsewhere. That is all you need to know.

cops are not failing to respond to victim crimes. either you think govt needs to hover over the line between victimless and victimed and obscure the line to make ppl afraid, or you simply support the prosecution of victimless crimes in general.

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“(people not getting arrested is certainly a bad thing for the New York Post’s reporting, anyway):”

Nonsense, Scott. The ‘metro’ section is simply the stuff squeezed in between the Sports section (rear 49%) and the “Rappers-Baby’s-Momma-Said What??” section (front 49%). They could fill the gap with cartoons in the meantime and no one would notice the difference.

It’s the city’s political machine. Fewer summons means less fines. Fewer arrests means more people getting away with tax evasion.

This is a clarion call aimed at all the special interests that benefit from the cops arresting, beating, or harassing the competition – everything from the unions to the cab medallion owners.

Just watch; all these people who benefit from the cops fucking over the serfs will fall in line with the cops. There will be no reform; the machine needs the cops to act as the muscle as it mulcts the poor and unconnected, and the serfs lack the power to unseat the machine no matter how pissed off they get.

Even Jeff Winger, who, before the war, lacked interest in it, has now found a leading role.

Soldiers of Blanketsburg, we fight not because we want war. We fight, – that we might gain peace! – Yeah!

Winger’s critics suggest he merely improvised hot-button patriotic dogma in a Ferris Bueller-ian attempt to delay schoolwork. Winger decries the accusation as, “A slanderous betrayal akin to 9/11. ” Later after the war, he would refer to the theory as “essentially accurate.

NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops

Given that the NYPD kills a non-zero number of people while issuing tickets, summons, etc., I wonder how long this “work” stoppage would have to go on before we could say it had (statistically) saved someone’s life.

Hell, how many NYPDers are killed doing this “work”? We could probably really run up the “if it saves just one life” score if we included them with the regular people.

Your inflammatory ignorant statement really makes you look silly. The fact is that the NYPD is the best large police department in the world. The fact that complaints against NYPD officers were down dramatically this year is what Al Gore would refer to as “an inconvenient truth”. I am thinking about the story I read yesterday about protesters in LA blocking the road until one fed up person had enough and drove their car through the line injuring one of them. Who were the first people these protesters called for help???… I’m not endorsing what happened but Karma can be a bitch. I would offer you this piece of advice as someone who lived through the Dinkins years, Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

It would be great if this continued for like a month or so without any loss in quality of life for city residents (perhaps an improvement since they wouldn’t be dealing with police bullshit) and the mayor went and fired half the force.

The peasants need to realize that their ruling class betters own everything in the kingdom. They are being nice by letting the peasants borrow some of it. So if a peasant breaks one of the rules, it’s totally righteous for the rulers to take back the stuff that is theirs in the first place.

At this point, fuck the NYPD and their unions. Whatever you may think of Mayor DeBlasio, the cops’ utter disrespect of and contempt for elected city government (THEIR BOSSES) is beyond anything that should be tolerated by any jurisdiction. THEY ARE BECOMING DANGEROUS.

Does the Mayor have the power to simply tell them to not come to work? Call in lightly-armed National Guard to keep the peace instead.

I mean, seriously, what are the options here when a police department of the biggest city in the country is completely out of control?

What’s especially great is that they never rebel when their bosses ask them to do horrible things to citizens, just when their bosses lightly criticize them.

If you want cops to bust down a random door at 2 AM and hurl flashbang grenades at children, they’re totally game. But say they should probably tone down some of their tactics and they lose their minds.

Police have this attitude that they can do whatever they want (who’s going to stop them, the cops?), and that citizens exist to serve them.

So when a mere citizen, like the mayor for example, goes and gives even the most benign criticism of the police, you bet they’re going to go totally ape shit. Nobody tells them what to do, least of all a puny citizen.

The Brown and Garner deaths (murders if you think so) had little to do with race, it’s DeBlasio and his racialist tribe that makes it that way.

Just watched some stupid town hall in Denver where the black Mayor and black police chief just nodded their heads when some 20-something black guy stumbled through his indictment of the System (and the Man, I suppose) keeping him down.

I would say that qualifies as criticism. Also, DeBlasio didn’t accuse the entire NYPD of being racist. He acknowledged the reality that his black son is at a greater risk of being of a victim of police misconduct. That doesn’t mean he thinks all cops are racist. In a sane world, this wouldn’t even be controversial.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees. My point is that DeBlasio didn’t object to excessive tactics.

Also, DeBlasio didn’t accuse the entire NYPD of being racist. He acknowledged the reality that his black son is at a greater risk of being of a victim of police misconduct. That doesn’t mean he thinks all cops are racist.

Okay. So, let me guess, if an Archie Bunker’s tells his kids that they shouldn’t trust black people, it’s okay because he’s not saying they shouldn’t trust all black people, right? That doesn’t mean he thinks all black people are untrustworthy, right?

Let’s remember: the cops are acting this way because the Mayor mentioned he instructed his half-black son to be careful around police officers.

Let’s be clear, if anybody has a full- or half-black son, they would do the exact same thing because… duh! I have no doubt the black police officers turning their backs on the Mayor have told their sons this, as well.

Blacks are much more likely to be killed by other backs than by the police. In fact when a police shooting does happen, it’s front age news in all the papers and the lead story for weeks in the TV media. When is the last time you saw a front page article on a gang shooting?

The Mayors comment/speech was asinine. I am a white person who grew up in the city and my father gave me THE SAME EXACT SPEECH!!! As every father should! He explained to me that “police have a very dangerous job and put their lives on the line every day. They are there to protect us but they never know what they are getting into so, if and when you ever have an incident with the police, stop whatever you are doing and listen to whatever the officer tells you” And when I did have a run in, I did what the officer told me, answered his questions and the not so pleased officer let me off. I had other WHITE friends mouth off, disobey the officer and not follow instructions – sound familiar? and it didn’t turn out as well (white cops prejudiced against white kids?).

The Mayor didn’t need to bring race into this but consciously chose to in order to play to his base and undermined his police force at the same time. Setting the stage for the current climate.

I know someone will inevitably say “you don’t understand, you’re white” and I concede to the “walk a mile in your shoes comment” but I would counter with you don’t know what it is like to be a cop who just hopes he or she will get home to their family every night when they walk out the door in the morning.

Good speech, but your dad wasn’t quite right. Ya see, the reason you should do whatever the officer tells you is that, if you don’t, he will escalate the level of force used (up to taking your life) until you do and people will applaud him for it. If you successfully defend yourself, people will call you a criminal and call for overwhelming force to be brought down upon you. You can always try to sue in court later, but the police have a monopoly on force.

There was a really excellent editorial in the Washington Post last Friday advocating that the rules of engagement need to change so that cops aren’t authorized to use force to arrest people for petty crimes.

If only we could get more than a few law makers to take up such a task, it might make a difference. But there is pretty much zero prospect of that, the law and order, zero tolerance, we have to save the children, cops are heroes gang are still very much in control.

The fact that resisting arrest is a crime is part of the problem. It results in the initiation violence against non-violent people. If someone (not a cop) tried to arrest you, you’d be perfectly justified in defending yourself. The same should be true if you are being arrested by the police. They are not kings or lords. They should have the same rights as the rest of us.

The Eric Garner case is a good example of this. The cops should have taken the time to talk him down. Garner was not violent. Even as after they jumped him and started taking him down, his hands were in the upward, fingers outstretched compliance position. There was no need to subdue him. Particularly because they were just responding to a call regarding something as petty and non-violent as selling loosies. In a just society, Garner would have had every right to start fighting once the officer sneaked up from behind and grabbed him in a headlock. You certainly would be if i did that to you on the street.

Normally under signs of rebellion such as killing authority figures, the government would move to pacify the population by randomly killing people suspected of any decent. NYPD can’t start a wave of revenge killing without the blessing of the Mayor.

So, you have cops making a conscious choice on what laws to enforce and what not to. Only one person has mentioned that in this topic. There go to excuse for the things they do is they have no choice – yet here they are exercising it.

And yea, it’s a sad indictment that this is really aimed at the people who make those petty laws. They are trying to hurt the cities coffers and other groups who benefit from those laws.

I wonder how much revenue NYC loses if the cops keep this up. Someone should do a story on that.

The NYT article linked above was also a joke. More defending De Blasio’s sorry ass (which the NYT’s has done since the start) than criticizing the cops. It also fawned over the idea of public service and the great technocracy.

I’ve heard officers say that they are instructed in training that they must consciously chose which laws they’ll enforce and which they’ll turn a blind eye. One article i read, the guy said his instructor said, “you’d never make it in to work because you’d spend all day writing citations and arresting people on your way in. There are laws, like the loosie law, they call “chickenshit” laws which are just such a no big deal that it’s not worth risking the aggravation and the potential for violence (or bad press) to enforce it. http://www.breachbangclear.com…..rner-case/

All the people that comment on the political aspect of this are weird. Is your goal to convince everyone on the Internet of your ideals one person at a time?

The real question here is where or not my theory holds up in my book “Tipping Point”. I have caught a lot of sh!t from critics who think my compelling arguments are fake. Given Scott’s over the top sarcasm on the nonexistent effects of under citing residents, I’d guess he thinks this won’t lead to something much worse. We shall see.

The policy of arresting people ” only if they have to ” is the policy they should have had all along. Maybe this new attitude will help ease the adversarial relationship between citizens and cops. Hopefully the police also consider Marijuana use as “petty ” also.The police are supposed to be FOR the people, not AGAINST them.

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So, we could be experiencing the safest period of time in NYC in forever. The gangsters (cops) are leaving the people alone? Can we just keep electing mayors that keep alienating the police, then NYC would actually be a safer place.

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Blasio is not a blogger or an activist, he’s a mayor. A politician can be against a war, but if boycotts the Christmas lighting ceremony in an act of protest, he’s going to hear it from the vets.

He should have waited for the facts, urged calm from the public while suggesting reforms. That didn’t happen. He basically took the side of the protesters, and would have done so in response to the Trayvon Martin shooting. He was muted when some protesters were chanting for the death of police officers. And then two officers were murdered.

SOMEONE reported Eric Garner. Michael Brown, the kids who are playing by themselves, etc. I worked in K-town, and if a car was parked right behind you, there’s no words to describe the rage you feel. Merchants in Swap Meets don’t like unlicensed folks selling stuff inside the building. In reality, most people call the police or the city to settle some disputes and won’t have their dogs shot.

Sure, NY won’t be plunge into anarchy because the police eased up a bit, but it might make some people’s lives harder. Keep in mind that the real anarchists want to disrupt commerce in response to injustice. Be careful what you wish for.

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“Presumably, next year, after this all dies down, the NYPD may note a big drop of crime in December entirely because they stopped finding reasons to charge people with crimes.”

Except they’re not REALLY finding reasons to charge people with crimes, are they!

They just charge people with minor crimes that are already on the books, at the electorate’s representatives’ request, rather than ignoring those crimes to the detriment of the public and the rule of law.

If you want them to stop doing so that’s your choice.

The police might see a drop in their statistics, which they could celebrate. But funnily enough, the number of crimes committed won’t necessarily have decreased at all.

So, enjoy the doorstep urination, parking violations and other minor crimes. I’m sure you’d be fine with them after a while. It’s not like they found their way into law for a reason.

It’s also ironic that people might celebrate the police celebrating reductions in crime that don’t actually exist, given regular complaints that crime figures are artificially reduced by the police.

So you’re happy for nobody to be held to account for the frequent minor crimes that make everybody’s lives that little bit more miserable? Good luck with that.

All I hear is constant complaints that minor crimes are not dealt with effectively enough.

But now the world would apparently be utopia if the police stopped arresting people for such offences?